Jez is key to clearing May Brexit deadlock
Conversational small talk is not Theresa May’s strong point. I once filled an awkward silence at a party by remarking on a speech she had made without notes while strutting about a stage.
“You were very animated, Prime Minister,” I said. “Will your next speech be like that?”
I wasn’t aware I’d made a joke. But whenever she passed me that evening, she’d mutter: “Must be more animated.” And cackle. No, I don’t know what to make of that either.
Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, is a listener. The Labour leader believes he can learn something from everyone he meets.
With him listening and her not talking, their Wednesday eyeball-toeyeball would have resembled a Trappist monk convention had Brexit not been the topic.
Now someone has knocked sense into Corbers to make him sit down with the PM, perhaps he can knock sense into her.
If they stopped being so bloody stubborn the solution to Brexit is within their grasp. May’s support from Jacob Rees- Mogg’s rebel European Research Group is them running down the clock. Playing for time takes us two weeks closer to the No Deal Brexit the ERG is wheedling for.
Sure, it’s worth the PM going to Brussels to reopen the withdrawal agreement, but no one in Westminster seriously believes she’ll succeed.
Our negotiators reckon the EU will sit on the PM’s proposals until March 21, the European summit eight days before Brexit.
Then she’ll be climbing the walls and agree to anything.
That leaves Labour’s plan for a permanent customs union, which is clear. Tagged on to that is what Corbs calls a “strong single market relationship”, which is less so.
Labour MPs say it sounds suspiciously like Norway Plus. That means free movement. Which Corbs won’t spell out because it would infuriate Labour Leavers.
To me it sounds a lot like the Irish backstop, that suppurating pimple on Brexit’s backside.
But the beauty of it is that, as it covers the whole UK, no separate regulations for Northern Ireland are necessary. That would lance the boil and get the DUP back on board – and, bingo, there’s a Brexit deal the EU could accept and one MPs other than headbanger Tory Brexiteers can live with. But it’ll take time.
Whether Article 50 is postponed, or the transition period extended, I can see us living for years in a kind of delay-ridden EU limboland.
In medieval times, prayers were said for the souls of the dead to reduce their time in the celestial halfway house between heaven and hell.
Brexit is so like purgatory we’d best get back on our knees.
Maybe now Corbers can knock some sense into Mrs May Suella Braverman, who resigned as Brexit minister in protest at Theresa May’s EU deal, no longer represents somewhere called Far Rum. Tory MPs claim the pronunciation was Suella’s way of making her seat, between Portsmouth and Southampton and famous for making bricks, sound posh. She now correctly calls it Fareham.